ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the contribution to the history of Soviet Oriental studies and an analysis of how Soviet and Western traditions of scholarship interacted. It investigates one specific conference of considerable importance, the twenty-fifth International Congress of Orientalists, held in Moscow in August 1960. Soviet interest in the East began right after the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks identified the colonies as the weak point of the Western powers. In 1930 the Asiatic Museum was transformed into the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In Moscow, too, the institute continued to be criticized for failing to produce a genuine 'Soviet Orientology'. The International Congress of Orientalists had been a regular event since 1873, when the first congress was held in Paris. Masha Kirasirova and Artemy Kalinovsky have pointed out the role of Soviet politicians from Central Asia as mediators of Khrushchev's new policy towards the Third World.
